Spring and fall are of course the best times. Spring has the flowers, I mean FLOWERS (april/may), and fall being harvest has the food! My favorite months are early May/June and all of September. Weather in both seasons is beautiful, though a bit more chance of rain in spring. The volcano Stromboli is in a very active phase right now. It's awesome. We are leaving early this year for Sicily. Hope you choose the island.

First, apologies for the Freudian slip in my previous post -- "win-sin situation" was meant to be "win-win situation." Then again who knows, there may be plenty of sin going on in either the countryside or Palermo!

Our only real disappointment about the whole trip was that we didn't have time for the Aeolian Islands. It's definitely on top of our list for our return trip to Sicily.

aprillilacs - loved your trip report! I've made several notes for our upcoming trip in May. A question for you - could you tell me where the train station in Giardini-Naxos is located? We will need to return our rental car in G-N and then catch a train for Naples, and I'm trying to figure out how far the station is from the rental car office. So far, I've been completely unsuccessful in trying to pin down the train station location.

The Giardini Naxos train station is on the northern edge of town, right on the main road, the S114 (not the autostrada, A18).

ttt